Apotheosis
by Dagdoth Fliesh
Summary: "The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye." After-Series OCXHiei
1. Marked Woman

Marked Woman

"The soul, fortunately, has an interpreter - often an unconscious but still a faithful interpreter - in the eye." - Charlotte Bronte, _Jane Eyre_.

_The day was bright, and the apartment she had settled into, dusty. She hadn't entered this room since childhood. Everything was as pristine as she had left it, even the small smiling doll resting in the corner of the room. Sitting back on the bed, she smoothed wrinkles from the white-flowered covers. A reflection of glass caught blue eyes and she tentatively picked the picture frame from the bedside table._

_A pair of powder blue colored eyes matching her own stared happily back. Her mother's face was somewhat longer than her own, and her jet black hair contrasted the young woman's light brown. But there was such resemblance it was hard to look._

_A weathered hand laid lightly on her shoulder, scars crisscrossing over thin skin like a road map of Stockholm; she turned to look at the ancient face of her grandfather and raised her own far more delicate hand to grasp his._

_"Are you sure you'll be alright here, Okoi?" his wispy voice came, although he barely moved his lips._

_"I think so," nodding in return, she looked back into the photo of her child self and mother._

_"She was a beautiful woman," the old man agreed, as if sensing her thoughts, squinting his own blue eyes to see the picture, made gray by age. "Your father must have felt the same way. Shame you never knew him, he was a good man."_

_Nodding minutely, she placed the frame back on the desk. "Are you sure you'll be alright in the mountains though? You'll be all alone now that I'm here in the city, I don't want - you could move in here with me if you like."_

_"I'll be fine," his wrinkled face twisted into a heavy smile. "Plenty to keep me busy out there so don't worry about leaving. You're a young woman now, you'll do just fine on your own."_

_She smiled, a little more confident, "I will."_

_She stood and her grandfather hobbled to the door, "This place will need some cleaning up, but for the most part the bank has made sure it stayed in good condition - oh look, here's the tea set I bought Kohana and Yorashi on their wedding… That was so long ago now." He paused, looking around for one last time._

_He studied Okoi intensely through fogged eyes; he took her hands in his which were cool to the touch. "I know I've told you this many times Okoi, but you will make a man very happy one day, just like your mother did for Yorashi. You're very sweet and delicate, so make sure he can protect you well." His frail sigh was a happy one. "When you find him, I think I'd like to see my great grandchildren."_

_She giggled lightly and hugged his surprisingly lean figure, hiding her strong blush in his shoulder, "I'll try to find him soon-" she tried to say, but although she mouthed no sound came out. Confused she touched her lips._

_She didn't have a mouth - - only congealed burnt skin._

Okoi woke with a terrible sweat on her brow. The dark room squeezed oppressively around her, choking her breaths, and although she gasped, and could feel the air filling her lungs, it was not adequate. She flailed momentarily, kicking, although it felt as if she were bound and fastened against metal, her limbs heavy and lethargic, and did so until her heavy covers were at the foot of the bed.

She felt her face, sighing in relief. "It was only a dream, silly," she told herself, still pressing the tips of her fingers against the corners of her lips. The feeling of dread stayed, tightening in her belly until Okoi thought she might be sick. "Only a dream…"

A reoccurring dream that became less hazy with each viewing. She could still feel her grandfather's hand on her shoulder and the scratchiness of his shirt against her forearms. The ending was new, and disturbing. Okoi could write it off as post-traumatic stress from her grandfather's passing a month ago - she had a basic understanding of psychology, of course - but how were her dreams so tangible? And there had been other things as well. Shadows moving in the corner of her eye, shapes in the darkness. Was she developing schizophrenia? She didn't want to dwell on it. Just thinking about her night terrors curdled her stomach.

Okoi reached for her bedside lamp, missed, and accidentally knocked the picture of her mother from the desk. It landed with a muffled thump on the floor. With a sigh and a wash of light she picked up the familiar frame, turning it over.

She had to do a double take - - and Okoi flung the picture of her mother away from herself with a choked scream.

Kohana's eyes were burned out, and all that remained of the once blue orbs were black charred holes.

* * *

"Are you sure you're okay, Tanaka-chan?" Hiriko asked Okoi. Hiriko Adachi was one of a few girls at the University she'd come to know in the semester she'd attended. The girl was sweet, if not a little plain with squinting eyes and a pleasantly freckled nose, black locks combed neatly to the waist. "You've been very quiet."

"I'm tired, I guess my studies have caught up to me." Okoi was _not_ about to say, 'I've been having nightmares and think I'm going insane.' She'd spent the last week battling sleep (since the picture) with American style black coffee and copious amounts of tea and caffeine, but her grades felt the effect because no one can truly study and take exams without rest. The one time she had slept, it had only been for moments, face down at her desk with a text-book as a pillow. Her racing heart woke her to her room, as she had left it. However, she was not going to trust a few seconds of undisturbed sleep for an entire nights.

"I know," Hiriko sighed demurely. "Togashi-sensei's exam was extremely hard. I swear he didn't cover half the questions in his dry lectures."

He honestly hadn't, or at least Okoi hadn't remembered in her sleep deprived state. As the pair approached the gates leading from the University, enveloped in amiable chatter and parting crowds of students making their way across the grounds to their perspective lectures, Okoi glanced along the wall. That's when she saw him. He was not tall, but he was also not dressed in school uniform, clad instead in black. He leaned almost casually against the bricks, hands in his pockets, as if waiting.

She couldn't say exactly why she had looked there to begin with, only that once she saw him, she found she could not break the gaze of his intense umber eyes. But the longer she looked the longer his eyes seemed to shed the still brown and color so unnaturally she could do little else but try to understand _what_ she saw. Layers of the brown peeled back to a red so hot it burned like molten fire, blazing and filling her with a horrible, painful heat that started in her insides and flowed through every pore down to her toes and fingertips like electricity, as if her skin were suddenly aflame. Fires danced in his eyes, bright crimson blood thirst - - they spelt murder for her. His features were placid, unchanging, but his eyes… they bored into hers, and with a strangled, dreadful, fear she finally realized _he _ was also looking at _her._ His glare cut deep, isolating her from the crowd like a lion isolating a zebra from the herd. '_Please,_' she thought, willing herself to break the gaze, '_look away.' _She was unable.

"Tanaka-chan!" Hiriko waved a hand in front of her face.

Okoi looked at Hiriko, and then looked back at the wall where those two ruby orbs pierced her audaciously. Hiriko followed her gaze.

"Well that's rude," she figured, Okoi half wondered why her colleague didn't comment on the redness of his eyes. "Let's go."

Okoi agreed hurriedly, but even as she walked away she could still feel those eyes boring into her neck with an intensity that might have killed. She dared not look back, no matter how much she wanted to, just to know if he really still looked in her direction. "He scared me," she admitted to Hiriko, once they were out of earshot.

"Not the type you want to get mixed up with," the level-headed Hiriko agreed in a whisper. "He looked like yakuza, but probably not very high up yet - - he didn't even have a suit. Just a common thug."

Yakuza… yes. Okoi shook her head minutely. She could put off those blazing eyes as a trick of the setting sun, more so as a lack of sleep. "He felt so dangerous," Okoi really didn't know how to describe it. "I swear he wanted to kill me."

"Kill you?" Hiriko laughed a little, and Okoi felt silly, abet a little better. "What are you, a marked woman?"

She managed a laugh, "I hope not, that would _really_ interfere with my schooling."

They walked a short way from the University and downtown past other students studying in cafés or window shopping. And yet, Okoi still felt as if she were being watched. When she had the courage to glance about, she did not see the strange man anywhere in sight. She thought it would make her feel better, or even give a sense of relief, but it didn't, if anything, it put her more on edge. '_Hiriko probably thinks I'm crazy, stop it,' _ she told herself after another uncounted look behind her into the busy evening crowd, to catch whoever was staring into the back of her head. '_You're just being ridiculous now.'_

She resisted the urge to do so again after they entered a yakitori-ya (a restaurant serving grilled chicken skewers). Too early for the restaurant to be full, this one filled with salary men after work, but a few tables already set up, filled mostly with suits. Okoi and Hiriko ordered, received the food, and sat relatively close to the back, studies in hand.

Okoi had thought herself hungry up until she had the food. Her neck prickled horribly as she nibbled at a wing of chicken and ginkgo nut, eyes unfocused on the text-book before her. She glanced upwards towards Hiriko and found her friend immersed. Beyond her a few business men laughed over their drinks, another table sat a family with a few young children, but beyond them just next to the door sat two men, thugs, facing her.

Looking at her.

The one closest to the door, on the right, had his dark short hair greased back. He was lanky limbed, but tall, dressed in dark jeans and a slightly oversized white blazer, his hands shoved into the pockets; his long legs stretched awkwardly into the walkway, and in his mouth he swirled a toothpick in a bored way. His cohort was a tad shorter and dressed much the same, but in darker colors and his hair was lighter and a bit longer without the grease. Both were wearing shades, and could have looked anywhere in the restaurant, even outside. Okoi didn't know how she knew, but she knew they were watching _her_. Her spine prickled with nerves.

Just as she was about to say something to Hiriko, the taller of the pair leaned sideways and mouthed something to his friend, who nodded, and they stood, shuffling out of the restaurant mainly unnoticed. Okoi's eyes followed them through the window where they crossed the street, only to take up positions on the other side leaning against a small bookstore. The shorter of the pair reached into his pocket and pulled out a smoke, cupping his hands to light the stick. The other continued looking at her. It was a silly thing to think that, Okoi knew, with the sunset reflecting on the glass, but the unnerving sensation crawling down her spine said otherwise. They were waiting for her to leave, and the sun sunk behind buildings.

Usually Okoi and Hiriko would leave together, after longer studies, but Okoi's conscious fears made her wonder if she should leave now, and without Hiriko. Hiriko may have been with her, but Okoi's pounding heart told her that it was only herself they wanted, not Hiriko. She met those dark shades of the man in the white blazer and for the second time today, she felt the electric charge of static in her fingers and toes. It was far less intense than the short man with red eyes, but it was still there, and that alarmed her.

"Hey?" she started, unsure, after a few more minutes passed. She didn't want to leave in total darkness. "I'm going home to get some rest. Study hard for our last final tomorrow, okay?"

Hiriko looked up, eyes slightly worried. "Are you sure you're okay? You look pale as a ghost."

Okoi managed a light laugh, putting on her best smile for her friend. "I'm fine, just tired. I'll see you later."

"Alright," Hiriko looked unconvinced but let it be. "Sleep well."

"I will," but only if she was wrong about the thugs, and still probably not then.

Plucking her school bag from the seat, Okoi left the half eaten food on the table and left the yakitori-ya. As she did so, she watched the shorter of the two thugs drop his cigarette on the ground and smash the smoking embers to pulp with his heel.

Her heart pounded and her throat felt tight, mouth dry. They were really following her. She wasn't sure if they knew she knew that, but she wasn't exactly willing to find out. Gripping the strap of her shoulder bag tighter, she started walking briskly back towards the University. She definitely wasn't going to walk home and show them to her doorstep, atop that, the University did have a small security force.

However the closer she got to the school, the less people she saw, and the more disconcerted she felt. The street was empty save for two or three people, and the sun had all but set, causing shadows to stretch long and dark in places she'd rather not go, although taking those routes would perhaps quicken her half jog back towards school. Footsteps followed her every step, and she thought she heard a snigger, but she wouldn't look and give them the opportunity to frighten her more - - she could already feel their eyes boring into her back.

But the closer she got to the University the more it felt _wrong_. There were no people on the streets - - besides her and the two thugs that followed. She was alone, and feeling ever more like she had been in the wrong to leave Hiriko's side. That feeling of unease grew with every moment, feeling baited and hunted every step towards the University, until she slowly came to a stop, and glanced backwards from where she'd come.

The two thugs were behind her, leering and smirking.

She didn't want to go towards the school, there was something bad waiting at the end of that walk, but going back the way she came felt equally wrong.

"You're a pretty sensitive little thing."

Okoi jerked towards the gruff voice, and gasped. A white blazer was barely visible in the shadows peaking from an alley. But he had just been behind her, hadn't he? She swallowed tightly and looked behind, but only saw the shorter of the two. Something here was terribly wrong.

"Cat got your tongue?"

"What do you want?" she asked with a voice that sounded stronger than she felt. They were walking towards her from either side. "I haven't done anything, so please, just leave me alone."

"You haven't," the white wearing blazer agreed. His toothpick moved obstinately with his words, almost falling from his lips. "But you have something we want, so we're going to _take_ it."

As they closed in, Okoi realized they were forcing her back into the ally besides her, corralling her further and further into the shadows while her mind raved and wondered what she had that they could want.

"I don't have any money," she managed, feeling like hands were strangling her throat. Her hand slid along the wall, as she used it to balance herself. Okoi's legs felt heavy and unyielding to her commands. She wanted to run, but she had turned mostly to jelly.

The thug sneered, as did his cohort, who had yet to say anything. "Oh, we don't want that."

Her heart dropped into her stomach and churned.

The thug's palm smacked against the wall besides her and he leered. She could have screamed for help, perhaps should have, but her throat wouldn't even make the most basic of sounds. Her fear had the better of her.

Up close she could see the pores on his skin and the slight stubble that had been half shaved from his chin. His other hand tilted his glasses down, so she could see him eye-to-eye.

But his eyes. They weren't human.

His skin slipped and budged until his form towered over her, his clothes ripping, and his teeth extended and twisted behind receding lips until they resembled daggers in a gaping maw. The glasses on his nose cracked and fell to the pavement as his size grew and twisted until he looked nothing human. Large bulbous cat-like eyes rolled towards her in their noxious purple sockets.

Okoi could not make a sound as the horrible rancid breaths huffed against her face.

A look of confusion, if that's what it could be called on the fish-like features before her, passed slowly. It was the only warning before a huge clawed fist grabbed the collar of her shirt and hoisted her high.

"I want those eyes, human. You have a demon's eyes!"

A moment later Okoi hit the ground with a solid thump and a _whoosh_ of air from her lungs. Her hands scraped on the pavement but the pain was forgotten as she looked up. The monster had stumbled backwards, clutching what was now a stump of an arm which spurted noxious black blood between his claws.

And between the monster and her stood a short man wearing a familiar black cloak which fluttered softly in the stale breeze. He held a katana outstretched, and as he turned towards her in a half glare over his shoulder Okoi recognized him with intense dread.

"You?" he said condescendingly, and looked to say something more before the creature before him howled in rage, and instead turned back towards the demon.

"_Gagh_! You miserable little runt! This is our human, you can't have her!"

"You know the price for breaking Enki's law," although Okoi could not see his features because he faced away from her, she could hear the distaste in his tone. He sheathed his blade with a flick. "But maybe you don't, you're so moronic you don't even know when you're _dead_, at least your friend died with dignity."

"Wha-? I'll crush-!"

A wet sound followed the enraged expression on the beast's face as it reached towards the man in the cloak. His body slipped, gushing with red, and with a ghastly howl collapsed into cleanly cut blocks of flesh. The scream was half out of Okoi's mouth by the time she clamped her hands over it.

Okoi didn't believe what she had witnessed. Her heart pounded in her chest and her vision swam a long moment in which she thought she'd either be sick or faint. '_Is this a dream?!'_

But it wasn't, and when the man in the cloak turned towards her, her fear jumped back into her bones and she jerked to attention.

"Stay away from me!" Okoi demanded, terrified.

He looked unimpressed, mouth twisting into something best described as a hard grimace. "Believe me, I have no _intentions_ of getting close to _you." _


	2. Haunted

Thanks to those who favorite, alert, and review, everything is much appreciated! I have managed to clunk out another chapter, and I hope it is enjoyed! It starts right were the other ended, oo-lala. Enjoy!

Kshepps27: Here's what's next, hun.

Emiri-oaks: Hopefully it's still interesting!

Haunted

"No ghost was ever seen by two pairs of eyes."

-Thomas Carlyle

He looked unimpressed, mouth twisting into something best described as a hard grimace. "Believe me, I have no _intentions_ of getting close to _you." _

Okoi stared down the odd man fearfully. He looked down his nose at her, his expression unchanging and hands hidden in the pockets of his cloak. She didn't quite meet his eyes after a minute of the silence. Her eyes fell instead to the hulking corpse of the monster shortly behind him, and the mangled body of the other. But that made her feel sick, so she didn't want to look there either.

"Just a suggestion," his voice cut her, much like the katana she knew lay at his side and she flinched. His drawl was not drawn out and his red eyes pierced her pale blue. "You should go see a psychic before you attract more of these _lowlifes_. It'd be a _pity_ if your corpse were to turn up in one of these alleys." And yet when he said it, it sounded like an insult.

"Who are you?" she asked as the odd man turned away.

He gave her a long look over his shoulder. Those red eyes sent chills down her spine, and she had the horrible sensation that they were the color of blood more and more. Okoi could drown in those orbs, and not the kind of drowning you felt with one you loved, but the drowning one feels when they plunge into a cold turbulent sea, spluttering and gasping in terror until they swallowed too much and sank into the black.

"Hn," the nameless man intoned and then vanished. His black clad body flickered and ceased to exist - - she stared into the dark street, shell-shocked until she came to the realization he had disappeared.

Okoi looked everywhere, but could not see him anywhere, and thought for one horrible moment that maybe she had gone insane and imagined it all. Yet as she stumbled to her feet, pressing her dizzy body close to the cool wall she looked again at the heaping carcass of the demon, and finally lost the contents of her stomach.

How Okoi made it home, she didn't know, only that her feet had carried her to her house and her key was in the lock. It clicked, and swung open to the dark living area. Her bag slipped from her hand by the door, and exhausted she made her way to her bed and promptly laid down. Her mind refused to process anything, even her fear of sleep, sleep that her body was demanding. The dreams took her.

_The day was blindingly bright, and the apartment she had settled into, dusty. Okoi watched flakes of dust hit the sunlight and float aimlessly in their space. Everything was as pristine as she had left it since being here as a child, even the small smiling doll resting in the corner of the room. She sat back on the soft rickety bed and smoothed wrinkles from the white flowered covers, her fingers catching against bumps in the worn sheets. A reflection of glass caught her blue eyes and she tentatively picked the wooden picture frame from the bedside table._

_A pair of powder blue colored eyes matching her own stared happily back. Her mother's face was somewhat longer than her own, and her jet black hair contrasted the young woman's light brown. But there was such resemblance it was hard to look. _

_A weathered hand laid lightly on her shoulder, scars crisscrossing over thin skin like a road map of Stockholm; she turned to look at the ancient face of her grandfather and raised her own far more delicate hand to grasp his. _

_"Are you sure you'll be _alright_ here, Okoi?" his wispy voice came, although he barely moved his lips. His face creased in worry._

_"I think so," nodding in return, she looked back into the photo of her child self and mother. _

_"She was a beautiful woman," the old man agreed, as if sensing her thoughts, squinting his own blue eyes to see the picture, made gray by age. "Your father must have felt the same way. Shame you never knew him, he was a good man." _

_Nodding minutely, she placed the frame back on the desk. "Are you sure you'll be alright in the mountains though? You'll be all alone now that I'm here in the city, I don't want- you could move in here with me if you like." _

_"I'll be fine," his wrinkled face twisted into a heavy smile as if the weight of the world were on him. "Plenty to keep me busy out there so don't worry about leaving. You're a young woman now, you'll do just fine on your own."_

_She smiled, a little more confident, "I will." _

_She stood and her grandfather hobbled to the door, "This place will need some cleaning up, but for the most part the bank has made sure it stayed in good condition- oh look, here's the tea set I bought Kohana and Yorashi on their wedding… That was so long ago now." He paused, looking around for one last time. _

_Okoi hugged him in goodbye, but as she did so and his hands clasped her around her back she found she could no longer see. A smothering darkness surrounded her, as if it were the arms she could still feel surrounding her body. Her heart pounded fearfully. She tried to move out of the grasp, but it was too strong to be her grandfather's, the arms long and disjointed. They tightened and ripped against the clothes she wore, pressing, leaving bruises in her delicate skin. For the first time she heard a sound. It was distant, a languid scream. _

_"__Your eyes… give me your eyes!"_

Okoi awoke sometime later sprawled atop her bed covers, still dressed in the clothes from the day before and her shoes still on her feet. She couldn't find it in herself to move. She'd been asleep so long now, it was already afternoon, and her final test had long passed

But Okoi was no longer sure if reality wasn't in fact something more than just attending University day after day, working towards a job she may or not like; she could remember _everything_ that'd happened. Seeing the red eyed man, the thugs, and the way one had twisted into a horrendous monster and then brutally cut apart. The way red orbs had looked at her with disdain.

"_I want those eyes, human, you have a demon's eyes!" _She heard the monster say again, and felt the earth fall away from beneath her feet as she teetered back towards sleep.

Okoi sat up, panting for air, although it would not reach her lungs. Her hands trembled, and she couldn't command them to stop, even as she pressed them against her chest, as if to make the rapid beating of her heart slow and calm. Were they not the same pale blue they had always been, like her mothers, or her grandfathers?

She turned and slipped her feet to the ground. The picture of her mother lay face down on the nightstand - - Okoi was too scared to look at the picture, much less touch it more than she had already, but it was the only photo she possessed of her mom, and even though it filled her with a dread she couldn't place - - a dark pit behind those burned eyes, like someone else could see through them, she could not bring herself to throw the picture away. But her eyes, as she stood before the long full-length mirror, were the same pale blue, like mist or snow, yet darker than white.

Okoi went as far as to pull her eyelid back, to look at the less seen parts of her eyes, but all looked normal. She looked for as long as her aching head could take it - - and then her cell phone beeped.

She jumped, startled. Her pounding heart would not allow her a moments rest, thumping against her ribs as the room boxed around her.

"_I'm outside."-Hiriko._

Of course, who else could it have been? Who else ever texted her?

She hurried to the door, and threw it open. The lanky limbed woman looked at her in surprise, her cellphone still in hand. She looked different with her hair out of its normal ponytail.

"Where were you?" Hiriko asked sounding a little upset.

"I was here," Okoi admitted, unsure how much she should tell her friend.

Hiriko looked at her balefully, her brown eyes a straight stare. "I'm honestly jealous. The test was horrible. I don't think anyone will pass. Are you not feeling good? You're pale."

Okoi shook her head and opened the door a bit wider as she stepped out onto the decking. "No, I… I'm just a bit faint, is all."

Hiriko shouldered her bag, "Well, I thought I'd just stop by to see if you're okay, it's not like you to miss a test. Feel better okay?" Okoi nodded as Hiriko turned away. "Let's hang out later this week."

Waving goodbye as Hiriko hopped back onto her bicycle Okoi closed the door and leaned back against it for support. The only sound she could hear were the cars passing on the street and the slow ticking of the clock. She needed some American style coffee.

The week went slowly. Okoi managed to reschedule the exam, she took it and passed. The semester was over for University and as much as the other students were pleased with their weeks of free-time, Okoi could not get excited. She had the dream two more times, and each one was more disturbing than the one before. She thought back to what the odd man in the cloak had said, "Just a suggestion. You should go see a _psychic_ before you attract more of these _lowlifes_. It'd be a _pity_ if your corpse were to turn up in one of these alleys."

Okoi fiddled with her book bag and rubbed the back of her neck, feeling as if something bad would happen soon. As the week had gone on the intense dread only became worse, working towards some precipice she could not see. Part of her wanted to say she'd gone insane and imagined the whole episode with the short man and his blood-red eyes, blame it on infrequent sleep and total lack of, causing bags under her eyes and a lethargic body, but the other part knew it had happened, and she wasn't ready to face that truth.

"Hey, uh, excuse me?" Okoi started, looking up. She was waiting at a stoplight which had just turned green. Cars passed by without a care for her and the other man who occupied the sidewalk, waiting for the light to change. The man next to her was wearing her University uniform, but he was lankily tall and red-headed, an odd combination for Japan, but he was most definitely Japanese. He looked down at her, one hand holding his black book-bag over his shoulder and the other shoved into his pocket. His beady brown eyes were strangely disconcerting, as if he were looking through her. "This may sound like an odd question, but, are you in some kind of trouble?"

The seriousness did not startle her as much as the genuine concern she heard in his voice, much more than being addressed by a complete stranger and she felt chilled goosebumps crawl down her spine, the muscles of her neck tensed and felt as if they were going to spring loose at any moment. She mouthed in surprise and could only muster a quiet "what?" Lurid nightmares rose to the forefront of her mind, the odd shadows she saw moving at all hours in the corners of her eyes, and the pounding fear in her chest. He couldn't possibly mean those sorts of things, how could he even know?

His face was straight, and he spoke again, much to Okoi's incredulous gaze, his words triggered something. "You look like something is haunting you."

Her brain tried to wrap around his words, try and come up with a reply that wouldn't sound silly. Again she heard the words ring in her head like a distant whisper, "_find a psychic."_ But in that exact moment she heard Hiriko call her name.

"Tanaka-san!" Okoi turned behind her, to see brown-haired Hiriko making her way over, and the tall man next to her turned too, with surprising speed. Okoi could not place the energy in the air and so many jumbled feelings suddenly roaring in her veins. Okoi's brain felt like ice, and everything seemed to be grinding to a dead stop.

They weren't far from the University, Hiriko must have ran to catch up. "Hiriko-chan? Do you need somethi-!?" Hiriko has just got in arms reach.

Hiriko shoved Okoi backwards.

Okoi couldn't let out so much as a scream, but she felt the world tilt as she stumbled back, the way the rubber of her shoes felt as they left the ground and the blaring sound of a car horn and the yell of the tall man who had been talking to her. But Okoi also saw Hiriko's face, and in that moment, she knew it was not Hiriko but some horrible disguise; her flesh was peeling, and the creature Okoi had mistaken for her friend smiled with a viciously fanged snarl.

Okoi's back collided into something hard, yet not the road of cement nor the cars that had been barreling across it. When she dare open her eyes, seeing as she had not been viciously mangled by traffic, she found herself cradled under a strong arm and she gasped and looked to its owner. Those blood-red orbs of the man dressed in black stared down at her, tried to drown her. Okoi looked at him in a numb shock as the deafening silence pressed around her. His glare cut deeply into her, as if trying to flay her skin from her body; it cut so deep, she swore she felt physical pain between her eyes, which flowed down to the tips of her fingers and toes, and built and built. And all she could ask herself is, '_Why won't he look away?'_

"_Hiei_?!" The red-head man shrieked in surprise. Wait, was that the short-man's name? Did they know one another?!

The strong arm supporting Okoi released her, and she landed hard on her bum in surprise. Hiei spared her only a scathing glance before turning.

Okoi suddenly realized she was on the other side of the street, but how did she get there? She had just been on the other side. She looked back across the eerily empty intersection and to where the tall red-head stood. His jaw hung loose and he looked back at Okoi and the short man in bewilderment, and shortly behind him the Hiriko-imposter still stood. When Okoi's gaze turned to the monster, it only started to become _larger_ and less _human_.

"_Your _**eyes**_human, they look delicious." _Okoi could not tear her blue-eyed gaze away, as the small human arms suddenly burst into long flailing tentacles which dripped with a black viscous ooze. The back of the creature doubled in size, hulking even over the tall red-head who was backing away, and a row of venomous spikes shot forth from its spine. "_Surely you won't deny me a _**taste**_?!"_

"That's _disgusting!"_ the red-head yelled, getting between her and the creature that was hobbling forwards on its disproportionate body. A blazing flash blinded Okoi momentarily, and the man was suddenly holding a glowing _sword? _Okoi's mind couldn't process what she was seeing. "She's not going to let you _eat_ her eyes! Pick on someone your own size, how 'bout?! AHHGH!" The red-head chopped wildly at the flailing tentacles which tried to engulf him.

A flash of black and Okoi saw the arc of a katana flash like steel lightning. Moments later the beast shrieked and toppled backwards in an anticlimactic defeat and Hiei landed gracefully in a crouch before it. For something so large, it was as if it were a fly to the short callous man, swatted down without the bat of an eyelash. Hiei held his sword upright, glinting in the light as black blood ran down the blade. Okoi jerked and looked besides her where Hiei had stood only a moment before and her fingers dug into the rough pavement underneath her. What was he? How could he have moved so fast? She didn't know if she wanted to stick around and find out, but the longer she sat there the more the feeling of dread sank deep into her bones. This was twice now. Twice.

"_I had it_!" the tall red-head barked down at the dark haired Hiei who flicked the blood from his blade without a care, even though he was barely as tall as the red-head's waist. "_You didn't need to jump in and show off, you lil-shrimp_!"

"_You're so inept that it probably would have laughed itself to death with how gracefully you swing that thing." _

They seemed impervious to her presence. But more than that, they did not seem to hear the nothingness that was a roar in Okoi's ears, drowning out the sound of their spatter or feel the stale and tasteless wind which was hot, but not humid. Time seemed to slow unnaturally.

And then a raindrop hit Okoi's cheek. And another, and another. And she saw the rain was red. She looked to the sky and her mouth gaped open. There was for better lack of words, a _hole _in the sky, a bright orange conflagration working outwards until it wreathed the hole as streaks of lightning pushing it further back. Inside the hole it was dark, an endless void. And then a slit appeared, rolling about, and Okoi saw the pit as it saw her. One person sitting on the ground, the only one alive as rain turned to blood.

"_I __**see**__you."_

Okoi let out a choked scream and shut her eyes, slamming her palms into her sockets. This couldn't be real, it couldn't, it couldn't.

"Hey, hey!? Are you alright?" A hand touched her, and she shook, trying to hold back the tears from her fright. The red-head crouched next to her, face screwed up with worry.

"Please, you have to help me." Okoi begged him, unsure what she was asking him for. Whether protection from her dreams turned to day or from herself.

"It's okay now," the lanky man seemed unsure what to do. "The demon is dead."

"No- you don't understand-"

"_It comes_," a bloody gurgle cut the air, and Okoi raised her eyes to the demon laid across the street. One of its bloody tentacles raised slowly towards her. The eyes looked at her furiously.

"What comes?" Hiei, who had remained by the demon turned towards it, his katana rose. "Tell me and I may _ease_ your passing."

The huffing demon smirked. "_It comes for _her. Her eyes. Her _eyes-!" _the demon gagged and with one last sloppy breath, it took no other and finally lay still.

And then those red-eyes looked to her, sharp like the katana in his hand, they glared with a horrible intent as she raised her face fully from her hands.

The red-head choked, "your eyes, they're bleeding."


End file.
